From your description, I understand that you want to know the best way to migrate the nine users’ mailboxes during the migration from SBS2003 to Windows Server 2012 Standard with Exchange2013.

Please correct me if there is any misunderstanding.

Based on my experience, to migrate SBS2003 to Windows Server 2012 Standard, you can refer the steps below:

1.Install Server 2012 on the new server, join to the SBS2003 domain. ( Upgrade the schema, domain function level, forest function level on the old server with new Windows Server 2012 Standard DVD disc)

2.Promote it to a domain controller, make it a global catalog server and a DNS Server

3.Wait for everything to replicate > move your data from the older SBS2003 to the new Windows Server 2012 machine.

4.Install DHCP on the new server (same scope as the SBS 2011), then shut down DHCP on the SBS server and activate on the new server

For the nine users’ mailboxes on the Exchange2003 (SBS2003), we can let users export their mailbox data to a local PST file from Outlook client. After that, we can uninstall Exchange2003 on SBS2003 machine (step 6 above), then create the corresponding Exchange mailboxes using the AD users informations which is replicated from the older SBS2003 server. Once it is done, when users open Outlook and connected to the new Exchange 2013 server, they can import the local PST file to their mailbox directly.

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Susan comment…yuck pst export?

Don’t forget to copy the nk2 files as well as show me an email user and I’ll show you someone who thinks their address book is the autocomplete info.

I see a lot of folks though using clean install and/or exports of psts as a way to move from Exchange 2003

One Thought on “SBS 2003 update to Windows Server 2012 and Exchange 2013”

We had to go through this with one of our clients, but with many more mailboxes. We actually opted to transition to Exchange 2010 first and two months later to Exchange 2013; by doing this, we were able to ensure there was little to no interruption in email flow.